(no subject)

[shadowkat]

Fairly relaxing day of doing very little...well not quite. Made butternut squash soup (quite easy, poured pre-chopped butternut squash, celery, carrots, onion with a little olive oil in a pot, added sea salt (sauteed for 10 minutes) then pepper, sage and ginger, plus 3 cups vegetable stock (boiled for 20-30 minutes), then pureed. Also made Betty Crocker's Gluten-Free Chocolat Chip cookies (btw - Betty Crocker's Gluten Free Chocolate Chip cookie mix is by far the best - and yes I've tried all the health nut ones, not to mention the cheapest.) Cleaned. Bundled up, took down various boxes, trudged six blocks for groceries, trudged back. Read. Watched tv. Wrote on the internet. Read flist.

Notable news items online or things that I feel like commenting on:

1. So, now that Disney has bought Star Wars, they've assigned their go to guy and current cult fav, JJ Abrahams to direct. (Hee, they'd ask the other cult fav director (which is under contract to them) - Joss Whedon - but they already assigned him the entire Marvel franchise to develop and oversee, one franchise per customer, please.) So now, Abrahams is doing both Star Trek and Star Wars? Oh dear. Isn't that two franchises? (To be fair the Marvel Universe is a bit bigger than the Star Trek/Star Wars franchise). Although Star Trek admittedly was more entertaining than I expected, I don't see Star Wars being rebooted well.
I'm hoping he chooses to go with door number three - continuation of the story or Star Wars the next Generation/Rebuilding the Republic - which is the story I've always been the most interested in.

2. Stephen King decided to write a 25 page essay about Gun Control - telling gun owners that it is time for stricter regulations! Which was great, except for one thing...the essay isn't free nor readily available to anyone who doesn't own a Kindle or feels the desire to buy it for 99 cents on the Kindle. So, the mind boggles, why didn't he just blog the essay or send it to a magazine so that people could scan it and share it across the net? It's not like he needs the money or anything.

3. CW has ordered a Lord of the Flies style pilot series called The Hundred, about a post-nuclear society who decides to send 100 juvenile delinquents with dark pasts to investigate the possibility of colonizing a post-nuclear holocaust Earth - hundreds of years after the fact.

Now...two questions come to mind:
1) If you are a juvenile delinquent - doesn't a dark past sort of come with the territory?
2) Why would any society seeking to re-colonize/return to a planet that was out of commission for ages, decide to send a bunch of juvenile delinquents to do it? How is that going to tell you it can be colonized or habitable? Unless you are bored and thinking, you know, we can get rid of the kids who are driving us crazy and host a reality tv series to entertain everyone else on-board our ship at the same time? Also, if they happen to survive and thrive...bonus, we can send a real team to investigate without worrying about losing any vital crew members or supplies in the process? Still seems a bit counter-productive.

Comments

[liliaeth]

Personally I'm just not interested in a Star Wars reboot. A continuation would be far more interesting. I mean, people hardly watch Star Wars for the story, it's not that complicated. it was the combination of actors and execution that makes star Wars what it is.

What I would be interested in is to see what happens in the next generation. Get the older actors back, even if only for cameos and then build a new story set in the same verse...


Also about the Hundred. I figure that the society would hope to get rid of most of those delinquents, depending on whether the surviving society is on space ships or space stations, they're most likely dealing with overpopulation. So getting rid of them is probably a side benefit. The kids are probably given the idea that if they succeed they can go back to their lives before, and if they don't... well at least they stand a chance of building something new, which is more than they'd have otherwise.

[embers-log.livejournal.com]

1. Personally I never want more Star Wars, the last three 'prequel' movies destroyed my love for the franchise, and the 're-edits' of the first three movies (episodes IV, V and VI) made me disgusted with Lucas completely. It is possible for JJ Abrams to 'save' Star Wars for me in some way, but I won't care if he doesn't.... It would have killed me if Whedon took it on because then I would have been forced to put my attention on Star Wars whether I like it or not! LOL

2. That is really interesting about Stephen King... I'm really surprised he couldn't have sold it to The New Yorker or serialized it for some newspaper... Writers can make some weird choices sometimes. Oh well. Would he have been that influential to NRA types anyway? Do NRA types own kindles (I know I sound very judgmental even asking that... but I don't own any kind of kindle type thing myself so I can understand a lot of people who aren't up with all the new technology).

3. I don't get the CW (weird gaps from my satellite provider, I still don't get why I don't get this).... But the show could work: you know that Australia was a dumping ground for convicts from England... With the British government probably thinking they could get taxes from them if they survive and prosper, and if they don't .... well... whatever.
It does provide some interesting ideas for story lines.... it would be interesting to see where they go with it (it would depend completely on getting some good writers signed on).

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

1. According to flameraven below - they aren't doing a continuation but a whole new story, new characters, new plot - just utilizing Lucas' world. Which I guess could be interesting. Like you - am rather ambivalent.

3. But the show could work: you know that Australia was a dumping ground for convicts from England... With the British government probably thinking they could get taxes from them if they survive and prosper, and if they don't .... well... whatever.

Except that Great Britain/England was not a spaceship floating about space hunting a viable planet to recolonize and settle, after years away. In this scenario you send a trained military/medical/science team to investigate. Not a bunch of undisciplined and untrained kids. Well not unless you are a reality tv show or a video game producer.

With GB/England it made sense - they weren't looking for a place to move too, they were acquiring property (power) and getting rid of people taking up prison space. They also weren't just sending kids.

It's based on a bunch of popular YA books, apparently.

[masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com]

You send a bunch of juvenile delinquents because you want guinea pigs to thin the dangers out before you send in the privileged classes.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

True, but...how do you know if the dangers survivable and what they are? You've sent untrustworthy people down there with their own agenda. Wouldn't it make sense to send a train military/science unit to scope it out first?
Particularly if you are hunting for a habitable "planet" and to get off your ship. This isn't like Great Britain sending off convicts to Australia, this is more like BattleStar Galatica floating around in space hunting a viable home.

[flameraven.livejournal.com]

Everything I've heard about the new Star Wars movie suggests that it is going to be a totally new story-- they've stated that they're not continuing the original trilogy, and they're not going to directly adapt any of the expanded universe novels, either, although I think they're likely to borrow some characters and themes from the novels. I think I have also heard rumors about borrowing some ideas from the Knights of the Old Republic video games, which I haven't played but by all accounts are really good and have solid writing.

I admit I was leery when I heard about a new Star Wars, but so long as they are doing a new story (and as long as they remember to build some sets this time and not rely so badly on CGI) I think there's a high potential for awesome. Really, I'm not sure it's actually possible to screw things up any more badly than Lucas already did with the prequels. The universe has a lot of interesting potential and cool ideas, so I'm curious to see where they'll go with it.

[paratti.livejournal.com]

Historically we did colonise Australia with convicts.

And IIRC Georgia was in part an earlier place to send convicts.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Eh...I get where you are coming from, but there's a lot of differences and one very minor similarity.

The Hundred is about a ship that is searching for habitable space years after a nuclear holocaust made earth uninhabitable. They want to try and colonize/inhabit Earth again.

Great Britain is a country, who got decided to send people to other inhabited and habitable countries...to get rid of them. In this case their convicts and debitors - mainly because of over-crowding in their prisons. They had habitable land and were quite happy where they were - they just wanted to acquire more.

The only similarity between the two is they both choose to send convicts, but Great Britain's decision makes logical sense - ie, let's get rid of our convicts and have them pay us taxes on the new land, and send valuable resources while we sit pretty here - plus we've acquired more property = more power, and we have people there who are capable of fighting off our enemies.

The Hundred logic is oh, we need to find a habitable planet fast, wait, I know we'll send a bunch of kids who get in trouble and can't behave down to this old planet that we made uninhabitable ages ago - to check it out! That way if they die, we know its not inhabitable.

Sigh.